Early life

Gerhardt was born in Berlin, where his father was a violinist in the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. He took up both the piano and the cello at the age of eight and studied with Marion Vetter and Götz Teutsch of the Berlin Philharmonic, and eventually began working under Markus Nyikos.

Musical career

Early on in his career Gerhardt took the top prize in several competitions: the 1990 Deutsche Musikwettbewerb Bonn, the ARD Competition that same year, and the Leonard Rose Competition in 1993.

Cello Concerto (Dvořák)

The Cello Concerto in B minor, Op. 104, B. 191, is the last solo concerto by Antonín Dvořák. It was written in 1894–1895 for his friend, the cellist Hanuš Wihan, but was premiered by the English cellist Leo Stern.

History

In 1865, early in his career, Dvořák started a Cello Concerto in A major (B. 10). The piece was written for Ludevít Peer, whom he knew well from the Provisional Theatre Orchestra in which they both played. He handed the cello score (with piano accompaniment) over to Peer for review but neither bothered to finish the piece. It was recovered from his estate in 1925.

Origin of the work

The Double Concerto was Brahms' final work for orchestra. It was composed in the summer of 1887, and first performed on 18 October of that year in the Gürzenich in Köln, Germany. Brahms approached the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own. He wrote it for the cellist Robert Hausmann, a frequent chamber music collaborator, and his old but estranged friend, the violinistJoseph Joachim. The concerto was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation towards Joachim, after their long friendship had ruptured following Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie. (Brahms had sided with Amalie in the dispute.)

The concerto makes use of the musical motif A-E-F, a permutation of F-A-E, which stood for a personal motto of Joachim, Frei aber einsam ("free but lonely"). Thirty-four years earlier, Brahms had been involved in a collaborative work using the F-A-E motif in tribute to Joachim: the F-A-E Sonata of 1853.

E Minor

I forgot something of younger daysWhen there were no caresAnd clouds appear lit thatMade me ask how theirLives could have been spentCarelessly wasting our dayInquires of what is the wayWith no replyAnd when you were youngThere's a lightness surrounds youThe world turnsWhen you take backAll the things that you've earnedYou found nothing at allCarelessly wasting our dayInquires of what is the wayWith no replyWhere did it go nowAll that you thought was well definedIt's all but become justA passing thought in spiteDon't let it go nowOur lives could be much more than this